


The Long Journey Home

by skoosiepants



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-19
Updated: 2007-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skoosiepants/pseuds/skoosiepants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Star Warrior</i> - working title: <i>Space Snakes Attack!</i> – was an instant money-making favorite in the sci-fi and romance sect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Journey Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is a STARGATE AU. This is CHOCK FULL of whatifs, is crossed over with SG1 more than once, and is at times, I've been told, meta-ish. More thanks than I can properly express go to chopchica for the blunt love, and helping me work out more than a few kinks, and also to devildoll, who did an extremely awesome beta job, as usual.

When he was twenty-five, the bulk of the world thought Rodney McKay was a woman. Or, well, they thought M. R. McKay was a woman. To be specific, they thought he was a slim redhead with green eyes and a guileless smile, the stock photo of an aspiring writer who’d been slick-talked into giving up her image for a minute percentage of any residuals.   
  
At the beginning it’d been a monumental fuck-up by an editorial shit named Laughlin, but the bigwigs had been gung ho about the idea, and what had been tongue-in-cheek was suddenly “a romantic adventure full of passion, humor, and a love that transcends time and space.” Which was utter tripe, of course, but _Star Warrior_ \- working title: _Space Snakes Attack!_ – was an instant money-making favorite in the sci-fi and romance sect.  
  
Although, really, it came as no surprise to Rodney that a story about a man with gravity-defying hair and sharp hipbones stumbling his way through the cosmos and having more sex than was surely considered healthy with a big-breasted space princess was embraced so heartily. And as long as he got a fat check out of it all, he was content to snub his nose at the public and pretend he was a lithe, pretty, twenty-two-year-old woman instead of a bad-tempered, budding astrophysicist already showing signs of premature baldness.  
  
*  
  
When he was younger, Rodney had dreamed in numbers. He’d dreamed in diagrams and schematics, in algebraic formulas and spatial relations. In his sleep, faces were mapped in points, skin was a number-scale of pale shades. His nightmares were stark and vivid and tinged with theorems, and he built a bomb for his grade six science project – albeit a purposely non-functioning one – because that’s the way the world ended once, in permutations of 238U → 234Th + α.  
  
He woke up screaming trace elements and scalar quantities, and he started scribbling everything down in notebooks, journals, napkins, scraps, anything that would take a pen.  
  
When he was twenty-five, his dreams burst into Technicolor landscapes, the details almost painful in their brightness, and his mind created Captain John Sheppard and his impossibly moronic ‘gate team - the first of many over the years, with clumsy Marine sergeant, Elliot, and lucky-beyond-belief Dr. Lancet, led by a trigger-happy colonel who chewed cigars and wore ratty, fingerless gloves all year round - and a world full of wormholes and parasites that possessed humans, enslaved planets, and his numbers became words and his words became intergalactic romance novels for the mass market.  
  
*  
  
According to reviews, M. R. McKay had a “poetic soul,” and a “deft hand with the fluid nuances of love.” He figured his sardonic wit just didn’t translate properly on paper. Which actually made him a pretty crappy writer, he thought, but hey. It sold.  
  
*  
  
When Rodney opened his door the morning forever after known as The Morning The World Went Insane, he was blurry-eyed and slightly hung-over and he hadn’t had his third cup of coffee yet, so it was perfectly understandable that he was struck dumb. It’d never happened before, of course - and he was vehemently certain it would never happen again – but there were only so many words he could say to a man as large and hairy and hot and _leather clad_ as the man looming in his doorway, and none of those words were particularly intelligent, so he was better off gaping, he figured, and rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye socket.  
  
Until his gaze dropped down to the behemoth’s hands, and the thick paperback curled in his fingers.  
  
He rolled his eyes, but gamely crossed his arms over his chest and ventured, “Yes?”  
  
“I’m looking for M. R. McKay.”  
  
Rodney yawned. “You found him.”  
  
The man arched an eyebrow and growled, “ _You’re_ M. R. McKay.”  
  
“Yes,” Rodney snapped impatiently, “I’m Meredith R. McKay. Meredith _Rodney_ McKay.” His eyes narrowed when the man let out a dry chuckle. “ _Dr_. McKay.”  
  
“Can I come in?”  
  
“Oh, yes, of course, because I always let strange, hairy giants into my home. Here, allow me to escort you to the kitchen and its fine assortment of _sharp, pointy knives_.”  
  
“No, thanks,” the man said, pushing Rodney aside and stepping into his living room. He turned and grinned down at him. With teeth. “I brought my own.”  
  
Rodney backpedaled hastily and flattened himself against the corridor wall. “That’s, um, great.” He mentally calculated the distance to his phone on its cradle in the bedroom upstairs, versus the time it’d take to dig his cell out of his overstuffed briefcase, and whether or not it was a good idea to run out the front door without any pants on.   
  
As it was, though, the man palmed the door shut and moved to stand in front of him, digging the book spine into Rodney’s sternum. “You wrote this,” he said, and _duh_. Rodney was pretty sure they’d covered that already.  
  
He nodded his head jerkily, though, because the man had _knives_ – Rodney was willing to take his word for it – and Rodney valued his life above all things.   
  
He really hated his publisher. His shitty editor, Larry, was going to burn in hell for giving this crazed lunatic his home address, because although it was common knowledge that M. R. McKay was a man – a hard secret to keep after ten years as a celebrated author – they’d kept the back covers’ bio stories the same, professing that M. R. was a thirty-two-year-old woman who lived in Wisconsin with her husband, Ted, and their five pet cows.   
  
Most people who showed up at his door with a copy of one of his books in their hands were Larry’s way of saying he needed to get laid.  
  
The stranger didn’t seem particularly interested in that, though, and pushed closer, dipping his head down to meet Rodney’s eyes, his own brown and intense and more than a little menacing. Rodney was suitably cowed.  
  
“Where’s Sheppard?” he demanded.  
  
Rodney’s eyes went wide. “Uh.” This was usually where he’d point out that Sheppard was not, in fact, a real person, except he didn’t want to upset the crazy man. Instead, he settled on, “What makes you think I know where he is?”  
  
The corner of the book pushed painfully into Rodney’s chest, the thin t-shirt a feeble barrier. “It’s been weeks, McKay,” he ground out, jaw clenched, and Jesus Christ, it was times like these that he wished he hadn’t let Jeannie talk him out of the panic button. He knew that cliffhanger ending on the last book would come back to bite him in the ass.   
  
He stuttered, “Listen, I. I’m a _writer_. Well, technically I’m an astrophysicist, but.” He flapped a hand. “I _teach_. I don’t, I mean. You get that this isn’t real, right?”  
  
The guy just glowered silently at him, still as a statue, dreadlocks spilling over his broad shoulders, and something. _Something_ about him seemed strangely familiar.  
  
Tentatively, Rodney brought his hand up to clutch the book, twisting it out of the man’s grip. He glanced at the cover. Yep, serial number seventeen, _Star Warrior and the Ancestors of Faith_. “He went back to Earth,” Rodney offered, because although Larry had talked him into the cliffhanger – it’ll generate anticipation and up sales! – he hadn’t actually thought about the plot beyond that.  
  
“ _Where_?”  
  
“Uh,” Rodney scrambled to remember if he’d ever given Sheppard a place to call home on Earth, “California?” Or, wait, “Colorado?” Damn it. “I’m sure if you just,” he waggled the book a bit, “showed up at the Star-Crossed Convention in Toledo next—ow! Watch it, sasquatch!” he yelped as he was manhandled further up the wall, blunt fingers digging into his shoulders. “I’ve enough trouble with my back as it is. I don’t need some mentally imbalanced—are you on drugs? That’s it, isn’t it? I’ve got—” Well, he had a good deal of money, actually, but he didn’t necessarily want to give it away. Especially to some sort of crack cocaine addict.  
  
“You’re starting to get annoying, McKay,” he warned, and Rodney spat out, face hot, “Oh, _I’m_ becoming annoying, am I? Try to get this through your nearly impenetrable skull, you ham-fisted yokel! Sheppard isn’t real! Dex and Teyla _aren’t real_! Carter, although incredibly sexy, isn’t real! It’s called fiction, apparently, and I’ve heard it’s employed by a great many—”  
  
“I’m real,” the man cut in, brow crinkled with bemusement. He eased back a little bit and Rodney sagged against the wall.  
  
“Good for you,” he said tiredly.  
  
“And,” the guy pulled a disgusted face, “Carter’s an android.”  
  
“Carter’s an.” Rodney stared at him, deeply offended on Dr. Samantha Carter’s behalf. “No, no, she’s _not_.” He’d been accused of making her too incredibly perfect and beautiful and intelligent to be a believable, lovable character - although she always tended to sell the most merchandise at conventions - but no one had ever called her an _android_ before. Hunh. His mind spun speculatively. That honestly wasn’t a half-bad plot twist.   
  
“Pretty sure she is,” the man insisted.  
  
“Who _are_ you, anyway?” Rodney demanded.  
  
The teeth were back. “I’m Ronon Dex.”  
  
*  
  
The thing was, the Ronon Dex who was steadily eating his way through Rodney’s kitchen cabinets –   
  
_Dex, Satedan warrior, sworn to avenge his planet’s destruction, laid bare his blade against Sheppard’s throat. “You can’t help me,” he growled. “You can’t keep me.”  
  
Sheppard’s answering grin was cocky. “Hey, come on, big guy. You hate the Space Vampires, I hate the Space Vampires. Let’s hate those Space Vampires together.” _  
  
– wasn’t the Ronon Dex that usually showed up at conventions.  
  
Rodney had actually never been to a convention himself, of course - because that kind of horror couldn’t even be imagined - but he always got piles of glossies and recaps and videos after the fact, and fans _never_ got Dex’s hair right. There was never _enough_ of it, or they’d skip the goatee completely, or they’d go with tight curls instead of dreads, or, heaven-forbid, a dyed, household _mop_.  
  
And the faces; the bland, humorless faces were _always_ wrong.   
  
It wasn’t anything that Rodney could ever define, exactly, until he stared at the man prowling his living room, and then his kitchen, and finally slouching down on a chair with a huge bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch. He held a spoon like a five-year-old, fisting the handle, eating quickly and nosily, and even though Rodney had given Dex a meticulous education on Sateda before he’d joined their military, it was absolutely perfect. _That_ was Ronon Dex. That was what years of loneliness and hunger and pain had done to him, and no one else had ever seemed to carry that out of the books. It was the ridiculousness of his character, the hugely fascinating contradictions; that he could be so childlike and menacing and serious and focused and knowing, wrapped up in a dirty leather casing, when he’d once been a scholar and a formally trained officer and, yes, a family man.  
  
Rodney wondered briefly if he could hire him.  
  
The saner parts of his brain were screaming for him to call the police.  
  
“Let’s, just for a minute,” Rodney said, poised near the door but immobilized by the likely assumption that Ronon would tackle him into submission before he even made it past the stairs if he made a break for it, “suppose you really are Ronon Dex, and that everyone I’ve ever wrote about is actually,” he paused, “out there somewhere. How did you connect _out there_ with _me_?”  
  
Ronon shrugged. “Carter knew.”  
  
“Carter knew,” Rodney echoed. “How?”  
  
Ronon shrugged again. “Don’t know. She’s pretty good at figuring stuff out.” He glanced up at Rodney, milk dripping down his chin. “Android.”  
  
“She’s not.” Rodney stopped, shook his head. “Okay. Okay, so Carter figured it out, and then you...?”   
  
Ronon gave him an are-you-stupid? look that was just eerie. “Found you.”  
  
“Yes, all right, but _how_?” Jesus, it was like pulling teeth.  
  
Ronon just said, “We should go,” and lumbered to his feet.  
  
Rodney blinked. “Go where?” Forced entry _and_ kidnapping. It was turning out to be a red letter day.  
  
But Ronon ignored him and put a finger to his ear. “We’re ready,” he said, and then he pulled out what looked like an excellent replica of Dex’s alien raygun and shot him.  
  
*  
  
Rodney woke up in the backseat of a midsize sedan, squished between Ronon and a man with messy hair and small, round glasses. He groaned, “Oh my god,” and the messy-haired man bobbed his head and said with a thick, Slavic accent, “Good. You are awake.”  
  
Ronon snorted and grumbled, “Took him long enough,” to the tinted window.  
  
“Oh my god, I _hate_ you,” Rodney hissed through clenched teeth, jabbing him in the side with a daring elbow. Then he said, “Ow, _ow_ ,” and, “You _shot_ me, you Neanderthal!” and, “What the hell is _wrong_ with you people?”  
  
Ronon growled.  
  
Rodney shifted closer to the little foreign guy. “Want to call off Cujo here?”   
  
“Ronon,” someone said in a lightly chiding tone.  
  
Rodney glanced towards the passenger seat, taking in a small, dark-eyed woman and her expressive eyebrows. They arched high under his regard.  
  
“Dr. McKay. I am pleased you have decided to help us find John.” She inclined her head slightly, and Rodney snapped his fingers, pointing at her.  
  
“Teyla,” he blurted out, and a small smile curved her lips.  
  
“It is good to finally meet you.”  
  
“Of course, of course.” His gaze traveled down her slim arm, lingering on the fine-boned wrist draped across the center console. “You’re, uh, much tinier than I pictured.” He couldn’t hold that against her, though, since he tended to be sparse on the physical Teyla-details. In his head, she was always an Amazon. Tall, strong, well-muscled. She had the mannerisms down pat, though—  
  
 _Teyla Emmagan slowly pressed her forehead against Sheppard’s, fingers light on his arms. “Brother,” she whispered reverently, and for once Sheppard didn’t fidget, didn’t grimace over the overt affection in her tone.  
  
He closed his eyes and breathed her in until his exhalations paced hers. _  
  
—along with that strange inner calm.   
  
  
Which had to make the little foreign guy Zelenka, if they were going with the present “The Morning The World Went Insane” theme, with his small knowing grins and deep hatred of children.   
  
Rodney watched him warily out of the corner of his eye. He had a handheld cradled in his palm and was muttering under his breath; Czech nonsense, mainly, but Rodney’s ear caught “ZPM” and “naquadah” and “ATA,” and he kind of wondered if they were all in some sort of cult. Which was oddly flattering, actually, if not any less scary.  
  
All he could see of the driver was spiky, bright blonde hair, precisely placed hands curled around the steering wheel – ten and two – and the outer curve of a blue-sleeved arm. He had a horrible suspicion that she was supposed to be their version of Carter.  
  
“Look, this is all very, ah,” Rodney circled his hand in the air, trying to rein in his irritation so as not to get _shot_ again – Jesus; had that really been necessary? - “nice, but I don’t really know what you want with me, and I’ve got a lecture tomorrow to prepare for, so if you wouldn’t mind dropping me somewhere...”   
  
Zelenka furrowed his brows. “I am afraid that is not possible,” he said.  
  
“Okay, no, I lied,” Rodney spat out, “this isn’t nice at all. This is fucking frustrating, and if one of you delusional freaks doesn’t let me out of here right this minute I’ll, I’ll.” He fumbled, because he didn’t exactly have the upper hand, and there wasn’t very much he could do beyond shouting.  
  
“Calm down,” Ronon said gruffly.   
  
“Don’t you have anything better to do than torment me?” Rodney asked, almost a whine, slumping defeatedly in the seat. “Distribute pamphlets? Build a compound?”  
  
“Ronon, did you not explain the situation properly to Dr. McKay?” Teyla asked quizzically, still twisted around in her seat.  
  
Ronon shrugged, jostling Rodney into Zelenka, who cursed and shot Rodney a glare.  
  
“Oh, you don’t get to glare at me, you tiny Czech bastard,” Rodney said, glowering back. “I _made_ you.”  
  
“Actually, I believe you simply have a precognitive link with Colonel Sheppard, and a minor ability to influence and manipulate his thoughts and actions across space and time.” Carter’s clear blue eyes caught Rodney’s in the rearview mirror.   
  
“Minor?” Rodney asked faintly. He could drown in those big beautiful eyes.  
  
“I always thought he was crazy,” Ronon offered, and Teyla narrowed her eyes on another low, “Ronon,” while Carter held Rodney’s gaze and said, “You carry a device.”  
  
Rodney instinctively groped for the pendant roped around his neck, fingers curling around the always-cool metal. He’d stumbled across it during his extremely brief stint at some backwater government facility in the Caribbean, fresh off his first PhD, before he realized everyone there was a complete _moron_ , and he had to either leave, or be driven irrevocably insane by their stupidity and kill them all.   
  
He didn’t believe in luck, good or bad, but he’d never been able to convince himself he didn’t need the flat, heavy triangle; didn’t need to press his thumb into the smooth indentation in the center, didn’t need to trace his fingers over the shallow carvings, the two men bowing towards a sun.   
  
Zelenka bent over and rifled in a bag stuffed by his feet, pulling out a thick brown folder and dropping it on Rodney’s lap. The tab read _Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay_ in thin red ink. The seal on the front was American military.  
  
“What...?”  
  
“Unfortunately,” Carter went on, “you were deemed too high profile to recruit into the program without rousing public suspicion. I’m sure you would have been an incredible asset, but General—”  
  
“ _What_?” Rodney demanded again.  
  
Carter quirked an eyebrow at him before shifting her attention back to the road. “You were never recruited. General Hammond always thought your personality was too abrasive, and that you weren’t worth the risk.”  
  
“Here,” Zelenka said, sliding a piece of paper on top of the folder, shoving a pen into his hand, “sign this.”  
  
Rodney had a white-knuckled grip on the pen, but his next, “What?” was considerably fainter. It was a non-disclosure agreement.  
  
“Sign, and I will explain,” Zelenka urged, and Carter said, “Go ahead, McKay,” which was just _weird_.  
  
Android. Huh.  
  
*  
  
The diner wasn’t the most secure place to discuss aliens and space travel and _freaky mind links_ , but on the other hand, no one was really paying them any attention. Terms like “Wraith” and “Ori” and “puddlejumpers” and “Stargates” weren’t unheard of in the circle of Rodney’s public conversations, either. They’d just never been _real_ before.  
  
Rodney hugged a steaming hot mug of coffee to his chest and groused, “Is shooting and kidnapping standard procedure for the United States Air Force?”  
  
Teyla stared at Ronon blandly.  
  
Ronon didn’t look up from his menu. “He was annoying me. What’s scrapple?”  
  
“An amalgam of the most delicious parts of farm animals,” Rodney said, lulled slightly out of his bad mood by the promise of food shortly joining his coffee. Then he eyed Carter skimming the laminated menu and asked, “You eat?”  
  
“What kind of question is that?” she demanded pissily.  
  
“Don’t get your circuits in a bunch. I just didn’t think robotics had evolved to include _digestive tracts_ , but hey, aliens—”  
  
“Ronon!” Teyla cried, and she certainly spent a lot of time doing that, really.  
  
“I’m not an _android_ , McKay,” Carter ground out, sending Ronon death glares.   
  
Ronon grumbled under his breath, “Whatever,” and it was probably a good thing Carter _wasn’t_ an android – although Rodney found himself strangely disappointed - because he figured she’d be the sort with laser beam capabilities.  
  
*  
  
Rodney ordered pancakes and scrapple and Ronon ordered the same, with a side of bacon and eggs and home fries.   
  
Teyla ordered eggs, Zelenka asked for buttered toast and jam, and Carter made do with a blueberry muffin – which was still creepy, Rodney thought, even if the android rumor was false; now that Ronon’d gotten the idea into his head, he couldn’t quite shake it. She was eerily _perfect_.  
  
“It’s fascinating,” Carter said, leaning forward onto her elbows. “We think Sheppard activated the device almost a decade ago, right after he joined the program. We didn’t even know the Ancients _existed_ back then.”  
  
“And I, in a rare and ridiculous display of serendipity or coincidence or whatever the hell you want to name it,” Rodney flapped a hand, “happened to be in possession of its sister—”  
  
“Base component,” Carter corrected. “Colonel Sheppard activated the remote, which mapped to his particular molecular make-up, and then translated his information to the base, identifying _you_ , and allowing a stable thread to form.”  
  
Rodney blinked at her. “You realize how incredibly stupid that sounds.”  
  
“It was something subtle,” Carter went on, ignoring the jibe, “that built upon itself over time. At first, we suspected your books were products of a possible security breach, but you were too distant from the program.”  
  
“Okay.” Rodney paused, staring at the chipped formica tabletop, following the spidery fingers of age with a thumb. He frowned thoughtfully. “Can I read his mind?”   
  
“You can read his _world_ , McKay,” Zelenka clarified.  
  
Carter half-grinned. “He was a little freaked out when he realized that. You, he feels only vaguely. Like an intangible presence.”  
  
Ronon snorted. “He got really pissed off-world once. When you kept calling him Kirk.”  
  
Bizarre. Utterly, utterly bizarre. And everything just kept getting stranger. He jabbed a finger at Carter. “I’m still not one hundred percent certain this isn’t all just an elaborate ruse,” he said. “The totally deserved yet disturbing Cult of Rodney McKay has not been completely swept off the table.”  
  
“You don’t have to believe us, McKay,” Carter said. “You just have to help us find Sheppard.”  
  
*  
  
Their brilliant plan to find Sheppard – and Rodney meant brilliant in a purely facetious way – was to let Rodney sleep on it. The bond was strongest on Rodney’s end during REM, Carter explained. Never mind the fact that Rodney had been sleeping for three weeks without a single spark of Sheppard inspiration; the longest he’d ever gone, actually, which made him kind of antsy.  
  
Teyla – just like the Teyla in his books, and that hadn’t gotten any less weird – enjoyed a good, long stretch of meditation, and although Rodney tried to impress upon her the fact that relaxing for the sake of relaxing had never been part of his repertoire, and thus wouldn’t make any difference in channeling his inner Sheppard, she gave him her intensely disappointed stare until he huffed and muttered himself into a quiet, cross-legged slump in the middle of the motel room bed.  
  
“Look, what if he’s just found a way to block me out, stop the device?” Rodney suggested, feeling ridiculous and tense and kind of thirsty.  
  
She arched a brow without opening her eyes.  
  
Rodney scowled. “This isn’t going to work.”  
  
“Shhh. You must focus, Dr. McKay,” she said softly, calmly.  
  
Rodney found himself settling, staring down at the brown and orange paisley bedspread. He filled his lungs slowly, following Teyla’s steady, even breaths.   
  
Ronon bit into an apple with juicy crunches.  
  
Teyla’s eyebrows twitched.  
  
Rodney’s stomach grumbled. Finally, he said, “Seriously, this isn’t working.”  
  
“I can shoot you again,” Ronon offered, taking a menacing step towards him.  
  
Rodney yelped, tumbling off the far side of the bed. “Stay away from me,” he demanded.   
  
Teyla looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh.  
  
Rodney glared at her. “I’m assuming you’re concerned about Sheppard, right? So you might want to lay off the _threats_ and general amusement at my expense, since I’m apparently your only chance at figuring out where he is.”  
  
“Not only, McKay,” Carter said, standing in the doorway separating their rooms.  
  
“Best, then,” Rodney amended, although the American military must’ve been more incompetent than he’d ever thought, since they’d lost one of their _lieutenant colonels_.  
  
Carter rolled her eyes. “Any luck?”  
  
“Dr. McKay is having trouble relaxing,” Teyla said, and Rodney got to his feet and crossed his arms over his chest and snapped, “I don’t _relax_. I sleep, occasionally, mostly at night and usually abbreviated, and you expect me to just nod off at one in the afternoon by _meditating_? You’d be better off getting a voodoo practitioner to pump me full of valium, and don’t even think about doing that,” he jabbed a finger at Carter, “because even that probably won’t work, since getting my brain to shut down is difficult under normal conditions, and will be _nearly impossible_ after I’ve been _kidnapped_ , and told some ridiculous story about _aliens_ —”  
  
“McKay—”  
  
“No, no, you _listen_ to me, didn’t you _tag_ him before you released him back into the wild? How does an Air Force lieutenant colonel just _disappear_?” He was close to hyperventilating, and considering locking himself in the bathroom for a good long cry, and the only thing stopping him was the hairy giant looming directly in his path, still eating that goddamn delicious-sounding apple. He was missing his afternoon lecture, not to mention his precious, precious lab time, and he just knew that bastard Franklin was messing with his papers, sabotaging his math, stealing his research, _usurping his eventual Nobel Prize_.  
  
Zelenka popped up behind Carter. “Come,” he said, “I have an idea,” and that was how they all ended up at a freaking _carnival_ , but Rodney was content to let them ply him with cotton candy and corndogs and funnel cake and pizza and probably the best homemade ice cream he’d ever had in his entire life.  
  
*  
  
“Mmmmm,” Rodney moaned, half-sleepily, leaning into Ronon with his second ice cream, already licked down to the sugar cone, just resting on his lips, chocolate melting against the gentle part. Best. Ice cream. Ever. He’d lost his fear of the yeti sometime after the funnel cake, when they’d both been plastered up against the roasted nut cart, soaking in the honey-salt warmth.  
  
They were currently teetering near the very top of a lazy-turning ferris wheel. He knew what they were trying to accomplish – hello, genius! Like his publisher _hadn’t_ insisted on making “I like ferris wheels, college football, and anything that goes more than 200 miles per hour” Sheppard’s official _tagline_. At least they hadn’t made him ride the roller coaster, because that monstrosity looked about three turns from falling completely apart, and after all the food he’d eaten, he was fairly sure he would’ve vomited all over everything.  
  
The ferris wheel was kind of nice, though. He yawned, and only gave a half-hearted protest when Ronon maneuvered the ice cream cone out of his hand. It’d been starting to droop, anyhow, and better Ronon finish it than having it melt all over his lap.   
  
On his other side, Teyla was humming close to his ear, the wind stealing any melody and leaving behind a simple, pleasant buzz.  
  
It was autumn, but the sky was clear and the sun was warm, and Ronon was blocking the worst of the chilly breeze, and before he knew it he was drifting off to sleep, snuffling a little into Ronon’s surprisingly soft leather coat.  
  
*  
  
He woke up in the sedan again, and he suspected they might’ve slipped him something to knock him out so completely, but on the other hand, he’d been kind of exhausted. A couple of all-nighters, compounded on the stress of the situation and the huge amount of comfort food he’d consumed, and it wasn’t all that far-fetched to think he’d been passed out enough that he hadn’t even felt them carry him off the ferris wheel and back to the car.  
  
Zelenka leaned over him. “Anything?”  
  
“Yeah, yes,” he said after clearing his throat and straightening up in his seat. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me he’d gone back?”  
  
Replicators. He’d dreamed of the Asurans and the Alterans and Carson and Elizabeth and Lorne, and the Air Force probably had two less officers, if General Landry’s tone had been any indication. Beyond that, though, he had no idea what had happened. Not yet.  
  
Ronon was rigid next to him, as if the subject was sore, and it probably was, since Sheppard’d left him and Teyla behind. Rodney awkwardly patted his arm.   
  
“It wasn’t deliberate,” he said. “He wanted to take you, but you were both too far away.” They’d been visiting overseas, touring Europe, staying with Zelenka, and he’d felt Sheppard’s frustration _and_ his immediacy. There hadn’t been any time.  
  
“That’s all?” Carter asked, disappointed.  
  
Rodney’s mouth twisted. “I get that this is all residuals, that this happened, like, _weeks_ ago, and then you lost contact, right?”  
  
Carter’s knuckles turned white on the wheel.   
  
“And now you, what?” He flailed a hand. “Don’t have enough power to open a stable wormhole? Don’t want to waste a trip out to Atlantis?”  
  
“The ‘gate won’t lock, McKay,” Carter said tightly. After a pause, she added, “As far as we know, Atlantis is gone.”  
  
*  
  
Rodney never figured out why they needed four people to drive him down to the mountain, but he was grateful for their presence. Ronon, silent and steady. Teyla, strong and gentle. Zelenka, smart and sharp. Carter, there and... android-like.   
  
He felt surprisingly bereft. Mere hours after learning Sheppard was _real_ , somewhere, out there, ridiculous hero complex and all, and suddenly he was – most probably – dead, and his heart was heavy, there was a lump lodged in his throat, and his eyes itched with suppressed grief.  
  
It was stupid; and _god_ , if this whole thing actually did turn out to be some sick cult, he was _killing someone_.  
  
In the days it took to get to Colorado Springs, they were all mainly silent, lost in their own thoughts. Rodney tried a dozen more times to dream of Sheppard, but he couldn’t get past the Athosian camp, Halling and his grave, long face, agreeing to help fight.  
  
He was so deeply miserable that he only got a glimmer of excitement out of seeing the SGC, meeting Teal’c, touring the grim halls and staring up at the hugely complex Stargate. Strangely, it wasn’t until he was lying in a narrow bunk on the Daedalus that the adrenaline kicked in. He was on a _spaceship_. There was a _pants-less alien_ on the bridge.   
  
All his genius, all his brilliant theoretical knowledge; there were... there were things he could _prove_ , there. Things he could take apart and put back together and change and _make better_ , and, all sorrow aside, it was pretty much the greatest thing to ever happen ever. He hooked the radio Carter had given him over his ear and hailed Zelenka.  
  
“Yes, McKay,” he said.  
  
Rodney took a deep breath. “I want to meet Hermiod.”

 

*

  
Hermiod made no bones about thinking Rodney was too slow and too pink and Rodney got into screaming fights with him on a daily basis. Novak started wearing earmuffs and communicating strictly through her radio.  
  
Zelenka seemed to think it was all very amusing, and Carter just steered clear of them, and the weeks spent traveling to the Pegasus galaxy literally flew by.  
  
After they paused in the atmosphere above the planet, Bradon brought up the Atlantis coordinates, and they all stared at the blank screen. Five miles off the coast... nothing was there.   
  
“Search the mainland for any life signs,” Caldwell ordered calmly, and Rodney’s hands clenched and unclenched, and Teyla squeezed his arm, standing beside him. It wasn’t quite a shock, because everything had pointed towards it, but it still felt like a Ronon-sized punch in the gut. Atlantis had been honest-to-god real, but it’d been destroyed before Rodney could do anything about it. Poor planning by the American government, really, to pass over a hugely important brain like his, but he supposed that wasn’t the point.   
  
When the entire planet came up empty, save for a dwindling herd of enormous slags – which Sheppard always said looked like buffalos that’d swallowed giraffes with camel-humps - they set course for the designated Alpha site, about two days out.   
  
Rodney retreated to his quarters and buried himself in his laptop and tried not to think about how he still couldn’t read Sheppard, and how for the first time in ten years he felt completely alone.  
  
*  
  
PX5-455 had been uninhabited but habitable, recently culled to the bone by Wraith and likely to be one of their very last stops on any feeding rounds.   
  
The villages were black, burned shells, but it was better than nothing, and the expedition had set it up as an Alpha site well before the Alterans had kicked them out of Atlantis. The Athosians had settled there, too, when remaining on the Lantean mainland had no longer been an option, and a passel of children greeted them after they beamed down from the Daedalus. They hadn’t been able to contact Sheppard or Weir by radio, but the numbers on the ground were encouraging.   
  
Rodney had no idea why he was with Ronon and Teyla and Carter, why he’d been allowed on the surface of an _alien planet_ before, say, that semi-competent airman with the red hair who never smiled. He thought about complaining, since he’d never even _held_ a sidearm before, except Ronon looked like he could eat people and he knew Teyla had the astounding ability to kick just about anyone’s ass with her fighting sticks.  
  
He nervously kept back as a dark-haired woman ducked out of a tent, smile relieved and wide and tired, and Rodney felt mainly arbitrary, and if he hadn’t made phenomenal progress with several bug-filled projects Zelenka had been fiddling around with, he would’ve felt useless about the mission in its entirety.  
  
“Elizabeth,” Teyla breathed, letting the woman fold her up into a hug.  
  
Elizabeth. She’d been a blonde once, in Rodney’s head, but the black-brown strands suited her, longer than usual, unkempt and matching the smudges along her jaw. She hooked her chin over Teyla’s shoulder and closed her eyes and sighed.  
  
“Hey,” someone said. Drawled, really, and that had to be Sheppard, scruffy beard and all, jogging over to clasp Ronon’s shoulder. It was kind of anti-climatic, actually, but that didn’t make Rodney any less relieved to see him.  
  
“What took you guys so long?” Sheppard asked, grinning.  
  
Teyla drew back from Elizabeth and eyed him with amusement and affection, head cocked. Then she said, “There is someone you should meet,” sliding her gaze towards Rodney, and Rodney felt like taking one giant step backwards when everyone followed her lead.  
  
*  
  
Meeting John Sheppard wasn’t weird. Oh no. They’d been psychically linked for _years_ , and until the past couple weeks, Rodney’d thought Sheppard had been an extremely hot fabrication of his mind, so _of course_ it wasn’t weird.   
  
Rodney rubbed damp palms on his thighs and barely held back blurting out, “So, you actually turned into a bug, huh?” or, “How’d that aging to death and coming back to life thing go for you?” because while Rodney was super-genius material, he wasn’t all that great in social situations. Plus, he’d always been kind of in love with him.  
  
Sheppard was much, um, _more_ in person. Age showed in the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Which were cynically hazel and wary, and the thing with his hands on his hips was in no way exaggerated – critics of Rodney’s characterization could go hang – since it’d been pretty much his permanent stance since being introduced. Like he didn’t know what to do with them – in pockets, too submissive; arms crossed, too much on the defense. Short of parade rest, which would’ve just been _odd_ , Rodney thought, there weren’t many other Sheppard postures he could perform without something to lean against.  
  
Sheppard gave Rodney a lazy grin that didn’t reach his eyes, and Rodney fidgeted with the hem of his jacket. It was a Stargate science team uniform jacket, and he’d just barely broken it in, cuffs soft against the backs of his hands.  
  
Rodney was not entirely sure he wasn’t going to throw up.  
  
There were awkward silences all around.  
  
Then Rodney clapped his hands, rubbed them together and said, “Well. We should probably, uh,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, “get going.”  
  
Sheppard nodded, then quirked an eyebrow at Carter. “You guys have room for a couple puddlejumpers?”  
  
*  
  
General O’Neill didn’t like Rodney. This was not a surprise. Rodney’d written him before, of course, in a vague, peripheral way, written his dry comments, bordering on ‘who the fuck cares?’ and he felt perfectly justified in avoiding him altogether.  
  
He tried avoiding Sheppard, too. He didn’t necessarily want to, because it was Sheppard - Real Life Sheppard! - but he figured it wasn’t worth the hostile awkwardness.  
  
He hadn’t counted on the hostile awkwardness searching him out.  
  
With a constant supply of walls and doorways, Sheppard spent an inordinate amount of time lounging silently around wherever Rodney happened to be. The bridge, mess, engineering deck, supply closet – once, when Rodney’s nerves had been frayed near to tearing – just outside his quarters, even, and Rodney was surprised he hadn’t insinuated himself in there, too.   
  
Finally, Rodney turned to him and snapped, “What? Oh my god, _what_? Are you mentally deficient? Are you—is this your horribly unstealthy way of _spying_ on me? I can’t.” He paused, because Sheppard’s eyes were dark and kind of scary, but then he swallowed and went on manfully, “I can’t, you know, sense you anymore. If that’s what you’re worried about.” Sheppard himself had explained that the device had been irreparably damaged by the Asurans, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still be concerned about Rodney hanging around, reading his mind or whatever. Even Rodney thought it was more than a little creepy, now that he knew everything had really _happened_ , and wasn’t just a product of his over-caffeinated imagination.  
  
But Sheppard drew out, “I’m not,” slowly shaking his head, and it was the first thing he’d said to Rodney in _days_. Then suddenly his expression cleared, and he ducked his head and half his mouth quirked up, almost sheepish. “It’s a little weird, actually.”  
  
“Right,” Rodney deadpanned, staring at the tiny flush of heat at the tops of Sheppard’s cheeks, “weird.” He wasn’t going to disagree. He thought, though, that they might not have been agreeing on the same thing. Either way, ‘weird’ was just about the understatement of the year.  
  
Sheppard opened his mouth and closed it again, gaze darting around the room, settling on everything that _wasn’t_ Rodney, and Rodney huffed an annoyed breath.  
  
“Look, if you’re going to lurk around anyway, you might as well help me,” he said, gesturing towards his laptop. “I know you’re not as dumb as your hair would like you to be.”  
  
“I’m.” Sheppard looked startled, wide-eyed, and Rodney realized that maybe _I know_ was not the best way to start any sentences around him.  
  
“I didn’t mean—”  
  
“No, right. I’m gonna just. Go,” Sheppard said, backing away. And then he was gone.  
  
*  
  
According to Carter, they’d been waffling about staging a rescue mission – Rodney knew full well that Replicators were nasty and difficult to destroy, and sending out reinforcements for a handful of men was bordering on moronic, especially with the Ori threat still on the horizon – but in the end they’d decided to ship out the Daedalus anyway, if only to drag Lorne and Sheppard back and court martial their asses.  
  
They weren’t actually court martialed, but that was mostly because of General O’Neill. Rumor was he’d told the brass that, even though their mission had proved ultimately futile – they’d gotten to Atlantis in time to get their butts handed to them by the Asurans and ‘gate off-world with a handful of Alterans and O’Neill before the whole place blew – he admired their moxie.  
  
Once they got back to Earth, Lorne and Sheppard even got to choose their new off-world teams, and Rodney only knew _that_ – he’d been locked up in the SGC labs for days after returning home; there was so much to explore – because Sheppard sought him out to join.  
  
Rodney blinked up at him, vision blurry from sleeping sporadically on a cot he’d harassed some grunts into dragging to the lab. “I’m sorry, what?”  
  
“We need a fourth,” Sheppard said, shrugging.  
  
Their constant need for a fourth had been a running gag in the Atlantis-based books; they never could hold onto one. None of them had _died_ , though, which was the only reason Rodney was strongly considering it. He was just really surprised Sheppard had extended the offer.  
  
“You want me on your team?” Rodney tried to clarify, because that was pretty much the last thing Rodney had ever expected from Sheppard. “You want me to risk my life on _alien worlds_?” He’d been aiming for a sarcastic ‘wow, what an incredibly stupid idea’ tone, but was afraid his underlying _stunned excitement_ had completed ruined it, since even though it _was_ an incredibly stupid idea to risk his genius in the field, there were _alien worlds_ to explore, and he’d been dreaming and writing about them for over a decade, and how cool was that? Seriously, how amazingly cool?  
  
Sheppard rocked back on his heels with a closed-mouth smile, eyes gleaming. “It’ll be fun,” he said, and Rodney found himself nodding, “Okay, all right, yes.”  
  
*  
  
“Hurry up, McKay,” Sheppard shouted over his shoulder.  
  
Rodney yelled, “Yes, of course, let me just dig out my magical _fix-it ray_ ,” as he squeezed himself tighter under the DHD. A spate of gunfire pinged the rocky ground just to his left and he bit off a yelp, then pried the burned casing off and slipped his hands into the mess of crystals and wires.  
  
“McKay!”  
  
Rodney cursed under his breath. He cursed Sheppard and he cursed the backwater planet they were stuck on, and he cursed Ronon, because if it wasn’t Sheppard causing intergalactic incidents with his indiscriminate flirting, it was Ronon and his default temperament of an enraged baboon. Granted, diplomacy wasn’t Rodney’s strong point, either, but he’d been dealing with crazed sci-fi fans for years, and knew when to hold his tongue. Mostly. This time was totally not his fault, though.  
  
His fingers fumbled with a hot wire and then the whole thing sparked and Rodney snapped, “Dial out, dial out, for god’s sake stop standing around gawking,” at Ronon, who growled at him, but dutifully pressed the coordinates for the mountain.  
  
Teyla ran up, panting, just as the ‘gate whooshed open, Sheppard stumbling down the hill after her, and the four of them spilled out on the other side and rolled down the ramp. Rodney landed on his back, Sheppard crossways over his thighs, face down, Ronon’s elbow digging into his side.  
  
“Ow,” Rodney said faintly, breath knocked out of him. He blinked up at the ugly underside of the gateroom.   
  
Then O’Neill was looming over them, brows arched. “Nice.”  
  
“Sir,” Sheppard groaned, and O’Neill waved him down as he attempted to struggle upright.  
  
“Hey, you look comfy. No need to move on my account. When you’re ready, maybe you’d like to join me in my office, though, hmm? Teyla.” He gave her a nod and a semi-pleasant grin, then ambled away.   
  
Teyla was the only one who’d managed a dignified trip back, watching them with silent laughter from the top of the ramp, P-90 angled down.  
  
“Off, off, get off,” Rodney demanded, pushing at Sheppard’s scruffy head.  
  
“Love you too, McKay,” he said, voice muffled by Rodney’s BDUs.  
  
Rodney poked him again. “Remind me why I agreed to do this?”  
  
Sheppard shifted to the side and quirked a grin at him. “It’s _fun_ ,” he stressed, and Rodney rolled his eyes, because fun certainly had nothing to do with it, but it maybe, sort of, had to do with Sheppard’s mouth. And the way it smiled at him. A lot.  
  
In fact, Sheppard had a habit of smiling little strangely delighted smiles whenever Rodney went off into a rant - which was unsurprisingly often, and Teyla and Ronon and Sheppard were the first people he’d been around who didn’t seem to want to kill him constantly because of that. Well, Teyla and Sheppard, at least. Ronon was a little iffy when he was in a bad mood, or, basically, whenever he wasn’t eating, about to eat, or basking in the afterglow of eating.  
  
Telya leaned down with a hand out and helped Rodney to his feet. He limped the rest of the way down the ramp and muttered, “Ow, ow, infirmary,” fingers clutching Teyla’s wrist.  
  
Her expression was indulgent as she walked beside him, heading down for a post-mission check-up. She was always so obviously amused by him, and sometimes that grated. Rodney grumbled, “I used to have _minions_ , you know.”  
  
She made a vague, I’m-listening noise.  
  
He slanted her a half-hearted glower. “People who were afraid of my enormous brain, sharp wit, infinite wisdom.”  
  
One of her brows quirked up.  
  
A hand landed heavily on his shoulder and Rodney jumped slightly, tossing Ronon a narrow look.   
  
Ronon ignored it and said, “Now you have friends.”  
  
*  
  
“These minions, were they robotic?”  
  
Rodney looked up a Sheppard. “What?”  
  
Sheppard shrugged, digging into the lab table with his thumb. He had his hip hitched against a tall stool, all forced nonchalance. “’Cause that would’ve been, you know, cool.”  
  
“Right.” Rodney eyed him suspiciously. “What did O’Neill want?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Rodney _really_ didn’t believe that, since O’Neill hated dealing with anything and anyone other than Dr. Jackson, and even that was arguable, but he let it go, turning back to his laptop. He had a story to churn out.  
  
Sheppard heaved a sigh.  
  
Rodney studiously ignored him.  
  
Sheppard sighed louder.  
  
“Okay, seriously, _what_?” Rodney snapped his laptop shut and straightened up, pinning Sheppard with a glare.  
  
His lips curved down in a pout. “I’m bored.”  
  
“Of course you are.” Rodney rubbed a hand over his forehead. Sheppard had gotten into the habit of bugging the crap out of him whenever he was bored. Rodney was mostly bewildered by Sheppard on the whole, though he’d never admit that out loud. Living in each other’s pockets for years hadn’t seemed to give Rodney any insight on dealing with the man in person, and this Sheppard was surprisingly subdued. Shy, almost, and that was completely incongruent with everything Rodney had ever believed about him.  
  
Sheppard stepped closer, smoothing a hand over the top of Rodney’s closed computer. “What are you working on?”  
  
“Nothing you can help with. Can’t you go,” he waved him off, “bother Ronon?”  
  
“Ronon’s out with Teyla.”  
  
Rodney’s eyes went wide. “ _Out_ out?”  
  
“Dinner.” Sheppard grinned. “And a movie. Elizabeth’s chaperoning.”  
  
Grabbing the edges of his laptop, Rodney slid it out from under Sheppard’s hands. “Huh, well. You still can’t help me, and I have to get this done.” It didn’t matter that he was studying alien technology and hopping all over the Milky Way, he still had a _deadline_. Larry was leaving him dozens of frantic voicemails a day and that cliffhanger was still holding strong as the worst idea ever.   
  
“What?” Sheppard asked curiously, which was a question Rodney pretty much wanted to avoid answering outright, considering.   
  
He went with a vague, annoyed, “Writing,” but Sheppard seemed to get the picture, brows arching high.  
  
“Ooh-kay.”  
  
“Yes, _okay_.” He made more shooing motions.   
  
Sheppard remained stubbornly where he was, startled comprehension visibly morphing back into curiosity. He leaned forward, pursing his lips and cocking his head, hands gripping the table edge. “Can I read it?”  
  
“Hell no.” Rodney jabbed a finger at him. “No way.”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Sheppard pointed out, “I could just buy it when it’s published, McKay.”  
  
Rodney’s chin tilted up. “You go ahead and do that, then.”  
  
“Maybe I will.”  
  
“ _Fine_ ,” Rodney stressed, opening his laptop again and angling it away from Sheppard.  
  
“Fine.” Sheppard propped his hands on his hips and Rodney’s gaze automatically dropped to them before darting away.   
  
He couldn’t help it. Sheppard was just. Asking to be ogled.   
  
And they were on Earth, and there were plenty of stores and Sheppard had plenty of money, but he still wore the damn tight black tee he always wore, and Rodney may’ve been a little in love with his fictional character – who wasn’t, really? - but he was lurching dangerously towards an embarrassing crush on the real thing.  
  
“Wanna go get something to eat?” Sheppard asked, and Rodney said, “God, yes, please.”  
  
*  
  
Rodney opened his apartment door and stared blearily at Sheppard, bundled up in a puffy, light blue parka and looking ridiculously cheery for the hour.  
  
“What?”  
  
Sheppard bounced on his heels. “It’s _snowing_.”  
  
Rodney shut the door in his face.  
  
Seconds later, there was more pounding and Sheppard drawling, “Come on, Rodney,” through the thin wood, and Rodney jerked open the door again and made an inarticulate growling sound before stumbling towards the kitchen and letting Sheppard inside.  
  
He stood in front of his percolator, clutching a mug and watching, waiting for the pot to fill, and he ignored Sheppard’s rustling behind him as he shed his coat and babbled about nearly falling into a snowdrift and soaking wet pants, and Rodney turned and only had a split-second of _wait, what?_ before Sheppard had disappeared into his bedroom. And then came back clad in some of Rodney’s sweats.   
  
Rodney eyed him suspiciously. “Why are you here?” he asked. They were on enforced leave, and despite Sheppard’s insistence that they’d all just needed a vacation, Rodney had it on good authority – Ronon’s, which, okay, might not have qualified as _good_ , but was probably at least reliable, since Sheppard apparently told him _everything_ – that the reason for their break was that Sheppard had been skipping his weekly Heightmeyer sessions in favor of hanging around Rodney’s lab, and General O’Neill had ordered him to “get his shit together” before they were allowed back into the field as a team.  
  
It looked like getting his shit together involved stalking Rodney at his apartment and threatening to drag him out _sledding_.  
  
“I’m bored,” Sheppard said.  
  
“Jesus, are you five? I’m not here as your _entertainment_ , Colonel. I wasn’t knocked out, kidnapped and smuggled cross-country to save you from intense boredom, okay? We’re on break, I have a book to finish,” Rodney groused, “and I’m not stepping one foot out into the snow.” He wasn’t. He really, really wasn’t, no matter how prettily Sheppard asked.  
  
Sheppard gazed at him through lowered lashes and grinned winningly.  
  
Rodney cursed under his breath.  
  
*  
  
Rodney actually didn’t mind snow. He didn’t mind the cold, didn’t mind being bundled up, didn’t even mind the burn in his muscles when he trudged through deep drifts, because there was something about snow that brought out what little whimsy he’d experienced in his childhood. He and Jeannie always built the most elaborate and envy-inducing snow forts on their front lawn, and they _always_ won the neighborhood wars.  
  
Still. Watching Sheppard sweet-talk a couple of nine-year-olds out of their toboggan in order to ride down what was probably the steepest hill in all of Colorado Springs wasn’t exactly what he’d call fun. It was heavily wooded, too, and Rodney was absolutely certain he didn’t want to wake up with a concussion.   
  
Sheppard went down once without him, whooping with glee, and then surprise-tackled Rodney onto the sled once he’d reached the top of the hill again. Rodney had never screamed so much in his life as he did then, slip-sliding down the hill on his stomach with Sheppard’s arms around his waist, half on top of him, laughing. They landed in a panting heap, legs tangled in pricker-thorns, and Rodney let out a hysterical giggle, face raw from the cold wind and wrists nearly numb from the snow packed into the cuffs of his coat.   
  
Sheppard shackled the back of his neck with a wet glove, giving him a friendly shake. “See?” he said. “Fun.”  
  
“I’m going to kill you,” Rodney finally managed.  
  
Laughing like it was an empty threat – it _so wasn’t_ – Sheppard climbed to his feet and offered Rodney a hand up.  
  
That evening, when Sheppard was passed out on his couch in yet another pair of Rodney’s sweats, afghan around his shoulders, half-empty cup of cocoa perched precariously on his stomach, Rodney almost didn’t hear it when he mumbled, “I miss you, you know.”  
  
“Um.”  
  
Sheppard’s eyes slit open, a sleepy, small smile on his lips. “Weird, huh?”  
  
Rodney stared at him from the recliner, buried under his own soft afghan, unsure of what to say.  
  
“I tried for years to shut that thing off,” he said through a yawn. “And now I’d give my right arm to have it back.”  
  
Exhaustion apparently made Sheppard chatty, because usually Rodney could barely get him to talk in complete sentences. He figured that was why he always told everything to Ronon. They could have entire conversations with a few well-placed grunts, hand gestures, and meaningful brow-lifts.  
  
“This is good, though,” Sheppard offered, eyes drooping closed again and breath evening out.  
  
Rodney watched him for a while before getting up to switch on his laptop, get some work done, pretend that he hadn’t wished those words had been _this is better_.  
  
*  
  
Rodney groaned awake, the pain in his back and the dry, swollen feeling along the inside of his cheek broadcasting that he’d fallen asleep at his desk again, hunched over his computer.  
  
His nose twigged to coffee, though, and his eyes twitched open, and Sheppard was lounging in his doorway, Rodney’s overlarge sweats hanging off his hips, a mug in one hand and a roll of papers fisted in the other.  
  
“Morning, sunshine,” he drawled.  
  
“Glargh.” Rodney rubbed a palm over his mouth and sat up, blinking.  
  
Then Sheppard said, “You made yourself a woman,” and Rodney choked in the middle of a yawn.  
  
A flush spread over his face and he got to his feet, muscles protesting at the fast movement. “I can’t believe.” He swallowed hard. “It’s not even _finished_ , and did I say you could read that?”  
  
“Rodney—”  
  
“I haven’t even,” he sputtered, shuffling over and tugging the first half of his manuscript out of Sheppard’s hands. “ _I_ haven’t even read it over yet.”  
  
“Rodney,” Sheppard drew out. “You made yourself a girl.”  
  
“I—”  
  
“You’re the _heroine_.” He was grinning now. The bastard.  
  
Rodney ground his teeth together, hugging the folio to his chest. “Yeah, well, I figured the public wasn’t quite ready for, you know.” He floundered.  
  
Sheppard’s grin got wider. “Our gayness?”  
  
“That’s not—”  
  
“Rodney,” Sheppard shook his head wryly, “I always get the girl.”  
  
“Of course,” Rodney bit out, snatching the coffee from Sheppard and taking a fortifying gulp. “Let’s recap, shall we? There was Eral, Annie, Dr. Smithe, Linea—”  
  
“The Destroyer of Worlds?” Sheppard interrupted, bemusement plain.  
  
“Chaya, Allina,” Rodney went on, ignoring him, because Linea had _so_ been hitting on him, despite Jackson’s fawning, “Mara, Teer, Norina—”  
  
“Meredith?”  
  
Rodney’s lips twisted. “Not funny.”  
  
“It kinda is,” Sheppard countered. Then added, “ _Meredith_.”  
  
“Look, you’ve actually just proven my point. You’re like. You’re like the James Bond of outer space, only considerably less smooth.” Rodney swore half his hookups were complete accidents, but that didn’t make them any less notable. “There’s _always_ a girl.”  
  
John pursed his lips. “Okay. Not exactly what I was fishing for, but—”  
  
“It was either me or Teyla, and I think Teyla would probably kick my ass. And yours.”  
  
“I think you’re missing _my_ point, Rodney,” Sheppard said, frowning.  
  
Rodney was pretty sure Sheppard didn’t have one. He rolled his eyes and huffed, “Whatever. Can I have breakfast, please, since you’ve apparently made yourself at home in my kitchen already?” He waggled the empty mug in front of Sheppard’s face.  
  
“Wait, no, seriously, Rodney,” Sheppard said, tapping the manuscript. “This is—”  
  
“Fiction. Science fiction, specifically. Untrue, made up, false. Filled with socially-accepted lies.” He was afraid he was going to start rambling, but he really needed Sheppard to give up on the underlying thread of _gayness_ , and he _really_ needed to stop calling Rodney a girl, or Rodney wasn’t exactly sure what he’d do. Kissing was a very real possibility, with all the body-friction it implied. There’d be no mistaking him for a girl _then_.  
  
Sheppard looked kind of petulant, but he gave up anyway and made Rodney pancakes.   
  
*  
  
The only thing worse than sledding with Sheppard was sledding with _Ronon_ and Sheppard. Which was how Rodney ended up in the emergency room with a gash on the back of his head, shaky and nauseous, propped up against Sheppard’s shoulder.  
  
“Oh my god,” Rodney groaned, and Ronon growled, “Stop being a baby,” and Sheppard carded fingers through Rodney’s hair, thankfully careful not to touch his _massive head wound_ , and clucked his tongue.  
  
“Ronon,” Sheppard said warningly, and Rodney wondered absently if that was a team thing, since even Elizabeth tended to steer clear of chastising the caveman.  
  
Ronon crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve had worse.”  
  
“It completely figures that my fate is _death by sledding_. I travel to alien worlds, yet a towering _oak tree_ manages to kill me.”  
  
Ronon groused, “Can’t we just leave him?” but Rodney was almost entirely certain he was joking. He’d been visibly concerned when it’d first happened, staring at the blood-flecked snow, hands gentle as he’d helped him to his feet.   
  
Later, when Rodney was finally home and tucked into bed, Ronon brought him donuts. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he appreciated the sentiment.  
  
The evening was a blur of pain and sleep and Sheppard nudging him awake at scheduled intervals, and Rodney was only feeling marginally better by morning.  
  
Except Sheppard was passed out next to him on the bed, sprawled on top of the covers, one hand fisting the blankets over Rodney’s chest. His fingers flexed and he shifted, snuffling into the pillows before fluttering open sleepy hazel eyes.  
  
“Hey,” he said. “Feel okay?”  
  
“I had my head nearly split open by a tree. Of course I don’t _feel okay_ ,” Rodney scoffed.  
  
Sheppard grinned. “Three stitches, Rodney. That’s nothing.”  
  
“For kamikaze pilots such as yourself, maybe.”   
  
Sheppard rolled his eyes. “I’ll go see if there’s anything left for breakfast.”  
  
“You didn’t leave Ronon out there unsupervised, did you?” Rodney demanded. And then, “Do you smell something burning? I smell something burning.”  
  
“I made cookies,” Ronon said from where he was suddenly looming in the doorway, hands in oven mitts.  
  
Rodney stared at him. Blinked. Ronon was wearing an iron-on Mr. T t-shirt. Rodney suspected O’Neill had something to do with that. “There’s a certain part of me that’s horrified right now.”  
  
*  
  
There was something cozy about lazy winter evenings, even if Rodney was concussed and being eaten out of hearth and home by a large, hirsute, alien warrior.  
  
Teyla had claimed the recliner and was snuggled down with a book, a cup of tea on the table by her elbow. She said, “I have often wondered what became of Sergeant Bates,” and Rodney craned his neck to see she was reading _Star Warrior and the Legacy of Worlds_ , the first in the Atlantis-based series.  
  
Sheppard cocked his head, said, “Huh,” and went back to his magazine, his legs curled up on the couch, feet shoved under Rodney’s thigh.  
  
Ronon was sprawled on the floor on his stomach, flipping through TV channels, making his way through a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  
  
“Wait, wait, go back,” Rodney said. On screen, Patrick Swayze couldn’t bring himself to execute his best friend, so C Thomas Howell – seriously, _C Thomas Howell_ \- did it for him.  
  
“You like this movie?” Sheppard poked Rodney with a toe.  
  
“It’s _Red Dawn_ ,” Rodney stressed, because _duh_. Who didn’t?  
  
Sheppard looked like he was trying to hide a smile, magazine rolled up on his lap, teeth biting into his bottom lip. He poked Rodney again and murmured, “Wolverines,” under his breath.  
  
Then at some point Rodney fell asleep, hand curled around Sheppard’s warm foot, and when he woke up, Sheppard and Ronon were avidly engrossed in an America’s Next Top Model marathon. From 2005, it looked like, and Rodney only knew that because he’d suffered through an extreme bout of insomnia that time Sheppard almost died by _nuclear bomb_ , and VH1 and Tyra Banks had been his very best friends, along with Ron Popeil, MadTV, and that annoying little PBS aardvark, Arthur.   
  
His left eye twitched and he snapped, desperately, “Seriously, when are we allowed back in the field?” because he was starting to think everyone was going just a little bit insane.  
  
*  
  
For the good of the team, he told him – or, rather, he told Ronon, and then Ronon told Rodney - Sheppard went back to seeing Heightmeyer again, and within a week they were reinstated, and then a week later they were all prisoners on M5X-388.   
  
It certainly wasn’t a _bad_ place to be imprisoned, though. There was a massive amount of food, for one, and soft, silky pallets, and Rodney suspected there was some sort of sedative involved, since he found he didn’t care _at all_. About anything. Except for maybe Sheppard’s half-naked body lounging beside his, and the way he sort of _arched_ into his sighs like a cat stretching out of a nap.  
  
Lorne’s team was sent in for a rescue, but they ended up in the cell next to theirs, Cadman’s pupils blown as she tapped rhythms onto the strangely warm metal bars, fingers slipping past every now and then to slide against Rodney’s.  
  
The metal seemed to melt under Rodney’s thumbs, only not really, and Sheppard curled up around his back, humming tunelessly, only it might not’ve been tunelessly, and might’ve been the chorus to Winter Wonderland.  
  
SG1 showed up before anyone started making out with anyone else - thank god, because Rodney’d been thinking about licking Cadman’s knuckles and, _oh my god, Cadman_ , which would’ve been _nightmare inducing_.   
  
According to Sheppard, SG1 wasn’t as cool as it used to be, since it was just Colonel Mitchell, Carter and two Marines Rodney didn’t know, because Sheppard never knew them, and they both looked like they were twelve.   
  
Withdrawal from whatever they’d been on was a bitch, especially since Rodney had only just gotten past the sledding concussion, and he’d come away from the entire experience even more turned on by Sheppard than usual – and, sickening enough, Cadman as well – since now he had the image of Sheppard curled around him, nuzzling his hip with soft affection, burned into his retinas.  
  
*  
  
“I had a point,” Sheppard said, dropping down into the seat across from him in the mess.  
  
“Okay,” Rodney mumbled around his fork. He swallowed. “Good for you.”  
  
Sheppard glared at him. “I’d really like it if you could _get_ my point.”  
  
“Let’s be a little more cryptic, then,” Rodney said, rolling his eyes.  
  
“If. Say.” Sheppard stopped, brow furrowed, staring thoughtfully down at his tray of untouched food.  
  
Rodney snapped his fingers in front of his face. “That was sarcasm, Colonel. Meaning you should be _less_ cryptic now.”  
  
“Rodney,” Sheppard drew out, and his hand fluttered a little, ineffectually. Sheppard never fluttered his hands.  
  
Rodney leaned forward, attentive. “What?”  
  
“You made yourself a woman.”  
  
Okay. Rodney’s face turned bright red and he wasn’t sure if he was angry or embarrassed or deeply, deeply hurt that Sheppard chose the _top secret government facility_ in order to beat that particular dead, traumatized horse.  
  
“Wait, that didn’t come out right,” Sheppard backtracked, eyes wide, grabbing Rodney’s wrist hastily before he could stalk away in righteous temper.  
  
“Your point, Sheppard,” Rodney said stiffly.  
  
Sheppard seemed uncertain around the eyes, but he didn’t look away. “I always get the girl,” he said. “Granted, it’s mostly by accident, and largely a disaster, after the fact, but maybe this time...” He trailed off, and Rodney stared at him, stunned, because he couldn’t have actually said what Rodney thought he’d just said.   
  
“What?”  
  
Sheppard drooped a little and slid his hand off of Rodney’s and shrugged. “Never mind. Not important,” he said, voice strangely small, and before Rodney could sputter a proper response he got up and walked away.  
  
*  
  
“First of all,” Rodney said when Sheppard opened his apartment door, “you realize I’m not actually a woman.”  
  
Sheppard rolled his eyes, but a smile twitched across his lips. “Yeah, Rodney.”  
  
Rodney lifted a finger. “And, since we’ve established that irrefutable fact, you are never, ever again allowed to _call_ me a woman.”  
  
“Okay,” Sheppard agreed amiably, grinning, and Rodney grinned back until all the grinning got kind of ridiculous, so Rodney reached up to cup Sheppard’s chin, overnight stubble prickling his palm.  
  
Sheppard grasped his shoulder, maneuvering him inside and kicking the door shut behind him, and Rodney’s hand shifted and slipped past his ear to press against his nape, and even though he really, really wanted to kiss him, his head sort of fell forward instead, face turning into the crook of Sheppard’s neck, breathing him in.  
  
Sheppard whispered, “I missed you,” and, “but this is better,” into his ear.  
  
*  
  
Rodney was exploring Ancient ruins on MXX-284 when _Star Warrior and the Long Journey Home_ dropped.  
  
Critics called it mundane, lacking the “fast-paced reckless adventuring we’ve come to expect from our hero,” and hailing the heroine as “brash” and “verbally abusive” and “ill-matched for the always suave Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard,” which just proved they were all idiots and couldn’t see John for the giant dork he was.  
  
It didn’t matter to Rodney, though. It would always be his favorite.


End file.
